


i want to see you stare at ceilings until you fall back asleep

by wolfchester



Category: Outer Banks (Netflix)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, also this is so AU cos the rest of the season was shit after the murder of the sherriff, jj and kie is the only option, just something soft, kie and pope made no sense i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:28:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23709163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfchester/pseuds/wolfchester
Summary: jj and kie have a moment.(au mid-season before any of that insane police chase stuff went down)
Relationships: JJ/Kiara, JJ/Kie
Comments: 35
Kudos: 298
Collections: Jiara Ocean Kiss Soulmate Endgame Excellence (aka a jiara-centric fic collection)





	i want to see you stare at ceilings until you fall back asleep

**Author's Note:**

> GOOOOOd this show man. i hated it so fcking much but loved it at the same time. jj is my son i want to protect and love him for the rest of his life. i love pope but kie and him made NO sense. shoulda been jj and kie, so here's my interpretation of that. 
> 
> title from the song 'living room, ny' by laura stevenson

JJ sucks in a puff of the blunt he’s holding and smiles. “I told you my cousin knows how to grow some good shit.”

“Just pass it here,” Kie replies, rolling her eyes. JJ does what he’s told, and soon Kie is breathing in that sweet, pungent smoke and smiling too. “Yeah, alright, fine. It’s good.”

Kicking his feet up in the hammock he shares with Kie, JJ looks up at the sky and searches for that North Star John B is always going on about. _It’s the only star that doesn’t move_ , he’d said one time. JJ finds that kinda comforting.

What’s also comforting is having Kie next to him here, her body heat warming him in the cooling evening air. Mosquitos swarm around them. He bats them away lazily. 

“Where are John B and Pope?” Kie asks, taking another puff. “I thought they were meant to be showing up sometime soon.” They’ve got a brazier lit in John B’s front yard where the four of them were supposed to be meeting to discuss their plans to uncover the gold down the well, but so far, it’s only Kie and JJ who have bothered to arrive. Not that JJ’s complaining, exactly. It’s nice just being with Kie for once.

“I don’t know,” JJ shrugs. “I’m guessing Pope’s parents have kept him at home. Probably to do with all that scholarship shit. And John B-- I don’t know, maybe he’s with Sarah.” He can physically _feel_ Kie stiffen beside him at the mention of her name. He turns his face towards hers with a cheeky grin. “What? I thought you two were friends again?” he teases.

Kie shoves him gently, making the hammock rock. “Shut up.” She takes one more hit then passes the blunt back to JJ. “She’s not so bad anymore.”

“Yeah, not after she helped us find all that fucking gold, man,” JJ chuckles. “Fuck. Four hundred mil,” he sighs. “What are you gonna do with your share?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. Donate it all to charity, maybe?”

JJ laughs at that. “Yeah, right. I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Okay, fine,” she huffs. “I’d donate _some_ of it to charity, at least.” She looks over at him, takes in the sharpness of his jaw, the dimples that come through when he smiles at the thought of one hundred million in his bank, his hair sun-bleached blonde and crazy after being under a hat all day. “What would you do with your share?”

He takes a moment to think about it, just staring up at the ever-darkening sky looking for that elusive star. “Buy a house down in Yucatan, for sure,” he says finally. “And a boat that can take me anywhere I want to go.”

“What is it with you and Yucatan, anyway?” 

She’s expecting some silly answer about beautiful beaches and Mexican women. Instead, JJ’s eyes take on a faraway look. He clenches his jaw and rolls the half-burnt blunt between his fingertips, thinking. 

“Furthest place I can think of going. Not that dad would bother looking for me, anyway.”

Her chest feels tight and an embarrassed blush flushes across her cheeks. “Fuck, yeah, of course. I’m-- I’m sorry--”

He waves her away. “No, it’s fine. It’s-- it’s just life, you know.” She watches the smoke leave his mouth, curl up into the warm North Carolina evening air, disappear. 

When Kie joined the Pogue crew in ninth grade, JJ hadn’t liked her much. He didn’t trust her. _She’s a kook, man_ , he’d told John B one afternoon after they’d all been hanging out down at the docks. _She doesn’t belong with us._ And, after a while, JJ had been proved right. Kie had ditched them for the Kook Academy and Sarah Cameron, for parties and perfect Instagrams, for white dresses and seersucker. Then, just as soon as she’d gone, she had appeared in the boys’ lives again, sans Sarah Cameron, promising she was over it all and wanted to be with them. Wanted to be a Pogue. And JJ _still_ hadn’t trusted her -- at least until she’d started looking distinctly more girl than skinny Pogue boy, filling out her shirts and wearing bikinis every day of summer. That was when JJ started looking at her and couldn’t stop.

She came back when they were sophomores. Now they’re at the end of their junior year, and his eyes are still on her, always have been, always will be.

The weed in his system and the feeling of Kie’s bare arm against his makes him bold. Or stupid. Probably stupid. “I had a crush on you for years, you know,” JJ whispers before he can stop himself from saying it. He doesn’t dare look at the girl beside him. He knows if he does he’ll just see her give him that same look she gave John B down at the well -- that _we’re definitely only just friends, you idiot_ look that made him laugh then but won’t make him laugh now. 

Her voice is small when she speaks. “You did?”

He stares down at the burning tip of the blunt, desperate not to meet her eyes. He can feel her looking at him, and he knows it’s with that fucking _look_. “Yeah, I mean, I don’t anymore, obviously,” he stutters, playing it off like a joke, even throwing in a smile for good measure. “I just-- you know, thought you should know.”

Kie softens beside him. “Oh,” she says, then reaches out to take the blunt from his hands. Her hands shake when they touch his. “Oh, okay. When did you stop liking me, then?” She means for it to sound like a tease.

Thankfully, JJ picks up on the joke. Humour’s always an easy way out. “Oh, probably when I found out you kissed John B. I thought, _shit, the girl’s got bad taste, I’m not so sure anymore_ \-- hey!” he yelps due to Kie’s fingers being dug into his sides, tickling him. “Get off me!” he laughs, pushing her away and almost out of the hammock. She screeches and steadies herself, holding on to the side of the hammock and JJ’s arm. He finds he misses the loss of contact when she pulls away. 

“Fuck off,” she says with a smile. “I don’t like John B.”

JJ steals a glance at her then. Her smooth, tanned skin, dark eyes, curly hair a mess of feathers and beads and braids, mouth that’s always either telling one of them off or yapping about sea turtles, but a beautiful mouth just the same. She’s fucking gorgeous, and he hates himself for noticing that time and time again. “Why’d you kiss him then?” he asks, feigning innocence, running a hand through his hair, trying to play cool.

She shrugs and sucks in another puff of the ever-shrinking blunt. “I don’t know. I guess I was confused about my feelings and wanted to see if I...liked him like that. Figured out pretty quick that I didn’t,” she says with a giggle. Her head feels light. It’s probably the weed. “It was like kissing my brother,” she continues, sticking out her tongue and making a puking noise.

JJ has to laugh then, loud and silly. For whatever reason, he’s fucking glad to hear that. He stretches his arms to rest his hands behind his head. Kie readjusts herself at the change in position and tucks her head into the crook of his shoulder. A breath catches in his throat. Her hair tickles his chin. _Fuck this girl, man_ , he thinks, willing his heart to slow down. Her head’s on his chest, she’ll hear it racing, and he can’t have that. 

The blunt’s almost finished now. She takes one more hit of it then turns her head to pass it up to JJ. With his hands trapped behind his head he can’t reach out to take it, so she places the tiny blunt in his mouth, her fingers gently touching his lips. His eyes focused on hers, he sucks in one more long breath. Then, she takes the blunt and leans down to crush the ash out on the ground and flick the burnt stub away. JJ can’t force his gaze to focus on something else, anything else. It’s all just Kie in her bikini top and denim shorts, sweat cooling on warm skin, lazy, high eyes, her body pressed up against his. 

Despite her better judgement and aware that she’s going to be making everything even more complicated by doing so, Kie reaches up a hand to cup JJ’s cheek. She rubs her thumb gently over the sore on his mouth, the bruise on his cheekbone. A frustrated anger builds inside her chest as she thinks about his father doing this to him, how he wouldn’t have ever deserved it, how he had no one at home to love and care for him the way she did. She feels the slight roughness of stubble on his jaw and thinks about how JJ’s becoming a man much faster than the rest of the boys are, even if he’s being forced into it, even if he doesn’t want to be.

JJ’s looking at her with something in his eyes that says _this is different, this is dangerous_ , and Kie’s not breaking the gaze, not looking away. She could never look away from him. Even with all the shit that’s gone down, all the shit with John B and this whole treasure hunt debacle. It was at Midsummers that she noticed him -- _really_ noticed him -- for the first time, and she hasn’t been able to look away since.

Driven by something deeper in her she doesn’t even have a name for yet, Kie closes her eyes and presses her lips to his. He’s warm and tastes like saltwater, and it’s only a moment before he’s dropping his arms from behind his head and bringing up his hands to hold her face in place, opening up his mouth to hers, letting her in (in more ways than just one). 

After a few beats, he pulls away. “This isn’t a pity kiss, is it?”

“What do you mean?” Her eyes are having trouble refocusing on his face. She’s off in the clouds somewhere now, half from the weed, half from the intoxicating feeling of his lips on hers. 

“You’re not kissing me because I embarrassed myself by telling you I had a crush on you and you feel bad for me, right? Cos that’s messed--”

She kisses him to shut him up and he doesn’t seem to mind, tangling a hand on her hair and tugging her impossibly closer. 

But then he’s pulling away _again_ and saying, “I thought Pogues weren’t allowed to mack on other Pogues.”

“Fuck those rules,” she replies exasperatedly, reaching for him again.

“Hey, you’re the one who made the rules, sweetheart,” JJ teases, but then he’s kissing her again and pulling her on top of him and he can think of nothing else, _nothing_ else, but Kiara, Kiara, Kiara.

* * *

The next time they kiss, they’re not high. They’re back down at the edge of the well at the Crain House and John B is shouting up from the darkness, _I got it all! Pull me up!_ and they’re all so excited JJ pulls her into an embrace and kisses her, right there and then, right in front of Pope and Sarah. 

“To Yucatan!” The five of them yell when John B surfaces with the duffel bag of gold bars, and JJ kisses her again, too full of energy to listen to the others’ protests of _fucking gross, man, get a room_!

“Will you come with me?” JJ asks Kie, slinging an arm around her shoulders as they walk out of that scary fucking basement, gold bars in their pockets. “To Mexico?”

She looks up at him with a smirk and presses a kiss to his cheek. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

And she will.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @jjmaybank (or @tommeshelby - i change my url back to that all the time lol) and send me your season 2 theories / reasons WHY jj should get everything good in life he dSERVES IT OKAY


End file.
